Rob Alvarez Bucholska
0

Why Your Game Mechanic Is the Learning with Elisa Navarro Chinchilla | Episode 404

 

Get access to over $1,000 worth of retention and gamification strategies, templates, and live sessions—for free.

All inside our Professor Game community: 🎁 professorgame.com/freecommunity-web

What happens when a powerful game opens Pandora’s box? Elisa Navarro Chinchilla shares the highs, lows, and serious challenges of designing games for real-world impact—from schools in Mexico to reforestation efforts in Afghanistan.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla is the CEO and co-founder of Gold Bug Interactive and a veteran educational video game developer with more than 25 titles under her belt. Her most recent projects include Dino Dance for PBS Fred Rogers, Sabz, a reforestation game for Afghanistan; Protection, a tabletop game to teach Results Based Protection for InterAction; Chuka: Break the Silence, developed for the Education for Justice initiative of the UNODC, that leverages social and emotional learning to help prevent domestic violence, and consulting for Project 21, FES, to develop a game for youth participation, governance and citizenship in the MENA region. Convinced of the power of games to support underprivileged contexts through collaborative learning, she has received several national grants in Mexico (Fonca, Procine, Prosoft) to create educational experiences with networked technology, alternate reality games, and digital literacy workshops. Her games challenge players to develop resilience through problem solving, stimulate critical thinking, and practice transferable skills. Elisa has an MA from the Institute of Education at UCL, UK.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in community building and education. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

Guest Links and Info

 

Links to episode mentions:

 

Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (00:00)
The basic formula for a serious game to be a good game is that the mechanic is bound to the learning.

Rob (00:09)
Hey,

this is Professor Game where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking that help us to multiply retention and engagement. I’m Rob, I’m a consultant, coach and I’m the founder of Professor Game as well as a professor of games, gamification and game oriented strategies at IE Business School, EFMD, EBS University and so many other places around the world. And before we dive into this fantastic interview with the fantastic Eliza

as you can see is a very deep and knowledgeable expert in the field of serious games. If you are struggling in any way with the retention of your members of your community, let me know. There is a call to action down below in this video. Click on it, do what it says and let’s get in contact so we can help you reach those fantastic and brilliant objectives you have. See you there. Yes, Engagers, we are now with…

Eliza, Elisa, how should I call you? ⁓

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (01:12)
Anyway, it’s fine. Elisa, Eliza.

Rob (01:15)
So Elisa Navarro Chinchilla, are you prepared to engage? Let’s do this. We have with us the CEO and co-founder of Gold Buck Interactive and a veteran educational video game developer with more than 25 titles under her belt. Their most recent projects include Dino Dance for PBS, Fred Rogers, Sabs, a reforestation game for Afghanistan, Protection, a tabletop game to teach results-based

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (01:21)
Absolutely.

Rob (01:44)
protection for interaction. You, Chuka, break the silence developed for the education for justice initiative of the Uno DC that leverages social and emotional learning to prevent domestic violence and consulting for project 21 FES to develop a game for youth participation. And many more. She is definitely convinced of the power of games to support underprivileged context.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (01:55)
You know DC.

Rob (02:11)
through collaborative learning. has received several grants in Mexico, Funka ProSyn ProSoft to create educational experience with network technology in alternate reality games, digital literacy workshops, and her games challenge players to develop resilience through problem solving, stimulate critical thinking and practice transferable skills. She has an MA from the Institute of Education at UCL UK. Many amazing things going on in La Elisa. Is there anything that we’re missing that we should know before we get started?

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (02:39)
No, no, no, I think that’s enough. It was actually enough.

Rob (02:43)
So if we were to look into your life a day a week, whatever you want to go for, what would that be like? What would that feel like if we were in your shoes or following you around?

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (02:52)
Okay. For the past 15 years, I’ve been working remotely. So my company, even if it’s based in Montreal, ⁓ I live in Mexico. I was born in Mexico. I’ve lived most of my life here and I live since the pandemic outside this big city. So I’m out in the woods. And so my daily day, like my daily routine.

It’s quite not like ⁓ you would imagine like in a studio or an office. I’ve been working with a lot of people from Mexico, but many other ⁓ collaborators are not living in Mexico. So we’ve managed to stay like in touch through several methods. So my day starts ⁓ basically

with WhatsApp, so we use WhatsApp to communicate, which we shouldn’t, Supposedly we should use Trello or Monday or whatever other software that’s more professional, Slack, whatever you can imagine. But for us, WhatsApp is the immediate, hey, we need something. So my day starts with messages in WhatsApp.

from my business partner in Montreal and my collaborators asking things and making sure we meet at the right times.

Rob (04:32)
Just to clarify your collaborator in Montreal is Paul Darvazzi, He’s a past guest and friend of the house as well. So I just wanted for the audience to clarify.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (04:36)
Yeah, it is.

I’ve

partying from the past four years. So I’ve had my company firstly with one partner, then on my own, and then now with Paul. And it has changed names. The studio has transformed into several names, Caldera, Gargamel, and now Goldberg Interactive. ⁓ So my day is basically ⁓ being in the woods for 10 minutes with my dog, back into the computer.

back into the woods for 10 minutes, back into the computer. soon, soon. Mail, mail, mail. ⁓ A little bit of creative middle. Some sort of game design thinking on paper, ta-da-da. Speaking to people, what’s up, what’s up in the road. ⁓ Picking up kids, what’s up, what’s up. So yeah, that’s how I would describe my days.

Rob (05:38)
That sounds great. And Elisa, we always like to jump right in when it comes to content and deep stuff. can you share about a time when things did not go well in your studio, where you were creating some educational experience, some game, and things as they tend to happen, they just didn’t go your way and how you managed, what happened, did you come out of it, did you learn from it, what were the results? We want to be there with you and live that story.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (06:05)
Developing serious games is quite a roller coaster. ⁓ We work as a service. We do not develop products ⁓ on our own to sell. We have ⁓ clients, to be museums, NGOs, universities, schools. ⁓

They all depend on funding. Normally that’s public funding. Like we sometimes go directly to government funds. So that means it all depends on what’s happening in the world. So ⁓ sometimes there’s wars and the money goes to the wars, et cetera. Sometimes there’s crisis. Now we’re living one.

directly affects the amount of work we have. In terms of a challenge, like a specific challenge when developing serious games, I would say ⁓ that we mostly work to create like a great game, but sometimes that game, half of it is implementation afterwards. When you create a serious game, what you try to do is you try to…

make someone learn something or train themselves on something. And that means that you’re expecting that there’s a specific group of people that will use your game in a specific context. And what happens is sometimes we create great games that go into the drawer because the NPO then doesn’t have any money to actually implement what they just paid for.

And I would say that for serious game developers, that’s one of the biggest challenge. Making sure that the people you’re working with or the client or the NGO has enough of a budget to make sure that the game is played by someone. Because it’s not like in triple A games that gamers will come and say, preventing violence game. There’s no marketing. There’s no…

Rob (08:21)
Marketing and…

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (08:29)
you really need to think on how to make sure the game is played. So that can be very frustrating. And I would say what we’ve done to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore is we… ⁓

Rob (08:48)
Is there, before you dive into that, there, you don’t need to name any names, of course, but is there any example that you can remember, like what happened and how it felt and what you did after you were managed to do anything? Just to get into a more specific context. Again, you don’t need to give us.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (09:05)
And I think it’s very useful. yeah, I don’t know if your, your this recording ⁓ would be listened by a you, you United Nations, anyone, but I can think specifically of Chuka Prevent the Break the Silence. It’s a game we created for the UNODC, which is a department against drugs and crime from the UN. This was a program we worked for three years.

and we were creating a game, creating an animated series, lesson plans, comics, ⁓ et cetera, et et cetera. And the game ⁓ was created in seven languages. So it was the idea, it was that it could be universal. And for example, the Portuguese version needed to have voiceovers.

for all of the places in the planet that speak Portuguese. So I had to grab someone from Saint-Tome, which is in Africa, and try to get a voiceover ⁓ actor to have a Portuguese voice representing that part of the world. So this is the aiming of I want to make a product that’s for the whole world.

⁓ What happens is then you don’t speak specifically to no one. You tend to go global and then it won’t be listened ⁓ by a certain context. So what happened with that game is that it was implemented in Mexico by the UNODC Mexico with a conference, some press, some schools involved.

And then the game started to flow into the schools. And I would say it is a very powerful game. Like it is a game where kids recognize different physical, psychological, and sexual violences. And the game, which is played through emojis and conversations with creatures through emojis, ⁓ makes the kids…

open themselves to recognize violence. So when you see this game being played in schools and you see two kids ⁓ speaking about what they’re playing, they would say, my aunt did this, my uncle did this, my dad did this, my cousin did this. And that’s super, super, super strong because you’re opening Pandora’s box in terms of violence. And I was like,

alerting the, you know, DC like, guys, I know we’ve worked with psychologists. know we’ve worked, but the game actually works, but there’s no one to contain these kids throughout the process, throughout the implementation. And that can be even worse than not dealing with violence. No. So, ⁓ for me, it’s the perfect example of, and the answer was.

Well, we gave them the telephone numbers at the end of the game. The lesson plans have the government numbers. yeah, coming from a Latin American country, I can say that that’s not the way that doesn’t solve it, So yeah, that’s not enough.

Rob (12:46)
say it’s not enough.

In the best of cases. Wow. there like, again, looking back, if you were to do something like this again, right? Or something similar or along those lines, is there something you would do differently? Like, how would you approach this?

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (13:02)
would

try to push the clients towards doing something more simple in terms of development, even if it’s against me, but making sure that part of the money is going to the implementation.

Rob (13:22)
Important important super important stuff

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (13:25)
Yeah.

And every time I have a conversation, it’s like, who’s going to play this? How are you going to make sure someone plays this?

Rob (13:32)
And in this case, it’s supported along that journey too. Eliza, how about a time when things actually did go well? Projects, you show off, you showcase something that did go well and what did you do? What were some of the factors that made that go so well?

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (13:50)
⁓ I would say there’s many little nice examples of that. The last one we did, and I love it, is a tabletop game. That table, well, is the pretty last one. I think that the process of doing ⁓ face-to-face game design, actually…

makes a more powerful game. in contrast of what we were saying, like a game that needs to be played by the whole world in seven languages, la la la. A tabletop game, I would say is the contrary, you You gather a group of people in a specific context and then you have the power of making themselves engaged face to face and magic happens.

This tabletop game was created for an NGO in Washington called Interaction. And it’s a game to train NGO leaders in countries in crisis, countries in war. So they have a specific methodology based on protection. And it was very interesting to translate the

content of this methodology into a tabletop game and actually make it fun because it’s really difficult. Obviously doing serious games, the most challenging part of it is you want a fun game and sometimes there’s a lot to be taught or to be trained. So it was a complete art.

Rob (15:35)
Yeah

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (15:43)
trying to make sure that it was fun, engaging, and you were in a place called Generica dealing with a crisis and you’re trying to solve it, but you’re an NGO, there’s another NGO that has more money than you, etc. And it just works. It’s a game that works. I cannot say it, but maybe this will be… ⁓ This is a recording that will be post…

the announcement, but we are a finalist with this game in Games for Change, which is like a very important and honored awards in the serious games world. And this is because it actually works. No, it is a game that works. And those little magic moments where the game works because the game design and the learning just match together. We have several examples of that.

And it just, sometimes it happens and sometimes it just don’t happen. Even if you try your best, you know.

Rob (16:46)
So Liza, with all this experience that you have, all that you’ve been doing all these years, is there a kind of process you follow when somebody comes up and says, well, let’s build a serious game for this or that? ⁓ How do you do it? How do you approach them? What happens? ⁓ You mentioned WhatsApp before. Is it just a bunch of WhatsApp conversations? How does that go?

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (17:07)
And what happens is that we immerse ourselves in the subject matter. Like we normally have a subject matter in a serious game. Sometimes it’s history, sometimes it’s biology, sometimes it’s violence, sometimes it’s ⁓ art, an archive, et cetera. So the most fun part for us, which at least for me, which I’m a nerd.

is actually learning, learning absolutely everything about that subject. So for example, ⁓ we worked on a reforestation game for Afghanistan through the GIZ. And we were around six to eight months speaking to a biologist about the different trees in Afghanistan and the different bushes. And it’s like being a little kid at school, like with their

biology teacher and just sitting there like learning and okay, and trying to make all the questions that are needed. And once you have everything in your head and you sort of understand it, you go back into the basics. You leave the subject matter expert and then you start like, okay, what’s the basic stuff here? You go into the game design process.

Normally, amongst two, at least for me, that works, like two people ping-ponging the game design. And once you have a game design, we try to go paper. If we can play it paper, that’s better. So we actually see if it sort of works or at least a digital prototype version. We create the Bible, the game Bible.

⁓ the GDD, the game design document, ⁓ and we give that to the client. ⁓ Once the client sees a prototype, the brief, and they say, green light, then we go into production and everybody goes and starts. Illustrators, animators, coders, all parallel. ⁓

especially UX design, ⁓ coding, and Illustrator, they all start the process to shape it. And afterwards you go QA and et et et cetera. You go with client in specific phases to make sure they don’t go back in the process because it’s very expensive to go back. Especially we don’t have loads of budgets in serious games.

It’s always very, very important to go with a client and say, hey, we have this, we have this green light. Okay. You cannot come back. Okay. So we have our characters already. Let’s move. And yeah, I would say that that’s the path until the end.

Rob (20:18)
Sounds amazing and from that process, from your experience, the things you’ve done, there, again, this is your process, this is what you implement, somebody using something that could be similar or not so similar, is there a, I don’t know, a best practice, something you would say, you know, make sure you include this and your serious game will be better, more solid, have better chances of success, whatever that recommendation is for.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (20:42)
Well, in serious games, I would say the basic formula for a serious game to be a good game is that the mechanic is bound to the learning. Many clients come and have AAA ideas on their head or they have mini games on their head and they try to match that to their learning. That’s chocolate covered broccoli and that’s…

Not the good one. So basically, they imagine… I had a lot of people asking for that. Like, you’ve got a platformer and then you’re having fun and suddenly, have a question and the whole game stops and you need to answer a horrible learning question and then you continue. That’s the formula for failure. And therefore, would say the contrary for that would be like, if you’re really trying…

to make someone learn something, it should be in the mechanic itself. So whatever you choose the game to be, the main mechanic has to be the learning, the core. And sometimes that brings you to a very difficult position in which you’re inventing mechanics that are not there in the commercial world. So how do you teach a player

to play a new mechanic that they are not familiar with. Because the commercial world of games have, I don’t know, 40 mechanics, very repetitive. They are always doing sort of the same things. And when you’re doing a serious game, sometimes those don’t work and you need a new one. So how do you teach in terms of, ⁓ yeah, like a training level? ⁓

⁓ to make sure that the player manages and you’re not asking too much of anything. ⁓ Yeah, but it’s weird because sometimes you don’t want to invent a completely different mechanic because then you probably will lose them, so it’s a balancing act. ⁓ We created a game on having energy in the cells through food.

Rob (22:46)
something.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (23:06)
So basically it was like the digestive system and you had to put like, well, basically anything you ate came into the body and you had to trigger into the bloodstream part of the cells. And I remember that game being a failure because people didn’t get the mechanic. Like they didn’t understand how it was played.

So yeah, it’s a balancing act.

Rob (23:40)
Got it, got it. Eliza, after hearing the questions, I think we’ve been aware of each other for a while, but is there somebody that comes to mind that you would say, I’d like to learn, I’d like to listen to this person answering these questions? Sort of a featured guest for the podcast.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (23:56)
⁓ One of my inspiring people ⁓ from years ago, especially because it’s not… It comes from another context, because ⁓ serious games have been strongly used in the Northern Hemisphere, no? Like I would say Europe, the States, Canada, are sort of familiar with using games for learning or for several different things.

But Gonzalo Frasca, which I don’t know if you know him, is a Uruguayan ⁓ game designer ⁓ that has a trajectory in creating ⁓ serious games that I super admire, which are called Dragon Box. The company in which he works is from Netherlands.

So it’s a bit of a mix between the European experience and the Uruguayan one, but he definitely has a lot to say. Like, he’s been years in this subject and he’s very clever in many ways. ⁓ And the games they do are so nice that they… What happened with those games is that…

The educational system ⁓ adopted the games into the classrooms ⁓ and then they created books to accompany the games. So it wasn’t the other way around. There were books and they created the games. No, it was the games that actually made them convert themselves into books and now they are part of the public system.

Rob (25:46)
That sounds very, very inspiring for sure. And in that same direction of inspiration, is there a book that you would recommend? And of course, why?

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (25:57)
Well, that’s, I don’t know, the classical one, no? I don’t know, James Paul G, the what do games have to teach us about learning? I would recommend that as a starting point. I normally don’t read more on what I do. I tend to read more about a mushroom at the end of the world and things on anthroposys like…

post-humanism and post-capitalism. So all what I read tends to come more into ⁓ literature or theory of ⁓ art and philosophy. So in terms of serious games, I would just think of ⁓ James Paul G and probably McGonigal, the other classic and classical one.

Rob (26:54)
Absolutely, absolutely and in this world of serious games, what would you say is your superpower? That thing that you’re great at doing that most other people perhaps are not as much

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (27:04)
I would say that my superpower is working with people, making sure that everybody feels part of the team. Everybody makes sure that they understand what they’re doing and why are they doing it and making them responsible of their part of the process. I’m not a project manager that makes people have deadlines.

⁓ very strict. And on the contrary, it’s like, we all need this game for this day. And how much time do you need for each bit of this process? And I’m not going to push you every day to get into that deadline. You are responsible for that. And you know, you fail. The whole team is in your hands as well. So it’s a, it’s like, it’s like. ⁓

Sometimes being a parent, there’s many tragedies. Well, in the project management, there are many tragedies as well. And I would say that this superpower would be making people responsible of their part of their project, of themselves, making them conscious of the whole project. They’re not a part of it. The project belongs to them.

Rob (28:31)
Absolutely, that makes sense and you know having a two and a half year old at this point fits very well into the parent mentality as you were definitely mentioned. Eliza, difficult one besides of course the fantastic games you’ve created. What would you say is your favorite game?

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (28:48)
I love tabletop games, so I would say Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is my favorite game. ⁓ It’s a tabletop game. And what I love about it is that ⁓ there’s no dice, so there’s no chance. It’s only your strategy that wins and you have to push a little bit ⁓ the other ways.

like into the border and it’s like a competitive balancing act of doing your part of the game the best you can but also making sure that the rest are not ⁓ doing their part of the game. But I don’t know, it’s a good game.

Rob (29:40)
Sounds very, very interesting. For sure I have not played it, I can tell you that. Is that the Ravensburger Puerto Rico 1897 board game strategic gameplay for kids and adults? Found it. It’ll be in the show notes and gauges. For sure. if you’re curious, you can certainly find that there. Eliza, before we take off, is there anything else you’d like to add? Of course, let us know where we can find out more about you and your work.

then we’ll say that it’s game over.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (30:12)
Sure. No, like I always share in terms of serious games that there are many different things that games can do ⁓ apart from engage and entertain. So just to remember that it’s a great tool for everything. Like it’s a great tool for government, it’s a great tool for health, it’s a great tool for education, for art.

So there’s so many forms and shapes about creating games that sometimes when we think of games and we think of commercial games, it’s very constrained. So there’s so many little weird games, artsy bitsy things to train for different little somethings that ⁓ it’s a great tool. And I just want to grab more students towards the serious games. ⁓ Each time I have a chance to speak to.

to kids.

Rob (31:11)
Amazing, amazing. Where can we find out more about you, your work and by the way, we didn’t mention much about this also the series play conference.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (31:19)
Absolutely. So I would say there’s, well, I have like three hats. One hat is Goldbug Interactive. So you can find us in LinkedIn, Goldbug Interactive. And I have the other hat, which is I run a conference with my business partner, Paul Darvassi, which is called Serious Play Conference. We run it every year in the States and we change.

places. This year is in Rochester in August and you can find also in LinkedIn ⁓ at SiriusPlayConf. ⁓ And myself, which is at Elisa Navarro in LinkedIn as well. I was actually about to make sure what’s my name. ⁓ But yeah, I think it’s…

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla at Complete in LinkedIn.

Rob (32:19)
So you have it complete there. That’s a good thing. Eliza, thank you very much for taking some of your time to be here with us today. For all the insights, for all the engagement that you brought. However, Engagers and Eliza, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey, Engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game.

Elisa Navarro Chinchilla (32:22)
Yeah.

Rob (32:42)
I guess and since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, loyalty, using game inspired solutions, how about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game on School. You can find the link right below in the description, but the main thing is to click there. Join us. It’s a platform called School is for Free and you will find plenty of resources there will be up to date with everything that we’re doing, any opportunities that we might have for you.

And of course, before you go into your next mission, before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

 

End of transcription